First of all, thanks to WG for access to the test; after playing about a dozen games in CVs and a bit more than that in surface ships on TST, here are my impressions that I am sure are echoed elsewhere in this thread:
Given the amount of time you need to set up a proper attack, it seems like it will be quite difficult to land hits on actively evading targets (non-potatoes). Perhaps some will become highly skilled at CV play and learn to land all three types of attacks with ease, but at least at the T8-10 matchmaking bracket things are rather dicey. I would have liked to experience the lower tiers with less AA to see if there is a proper learning curve that won't make new CV players unduly frustrated and give up on the mode after a battle or two.
As many others have said, the amount of flak means that at times you can't get an attack off before all your planes are lost, or can only get one attack off. Uptiered CVs especially seem rather useless. Ships at most have a reload timer of ~30s and are constantly maneuvering around the battlefield, staying constantly engaged. In contrast, CVs are either in minigame mode or in pseudo-death timer mode, which doesn't feel terribly good given how short a time some minigame experiences may last.
Targets in overlapping AA bubbles are often nigh impossible to hit, while lone BBs and CVs seem quite vulnerable; this is, of course, not too different from the current RTS style, with the major exception that a CV who cannot attack in the RTS version can still spot, defend, feint attacks, or prepare other attacks while waiting for AA to thin out, while CVs in the test version simply don't have as much to do meaningfully. Flying around to spot in this arcadey version feels rather unrewarding, and fighter defense clumsy and inflexible to use. This means that CVs may, as others have pointed out, be relegated mostly to a selfish and sometimes entirely ineffectual damaging role.
The overall gameplay style seems to have gone from RTS to RNG bullet hell dodging with an occasional attack minigame thrown in there. Dodging flak might be more enjoyable if flak bursts were more telegraphed, plane control was smoother (it is difficult to thread the needle with an entire squadron of planes, and AD turning often seems like too much while mouse turning is not enough), and flak hits were a little less punishing, but in the current state it feels a bit like a chore to me. But then again, I don't find bullet hell/dodging games that much fun in general.
AA in surface ships doesn't feel great with the limited amount of control.
Graphically, the planes look great! However, flying doesn't feel that visceral due to the player controlling an entire squadron, having no control over altitude, etc. Perhaps having several altitude levels the player can select (similar to submarines and depth) might help a little, but the rework seems like it tries too hard to emulate ship controls and just doesn't give me the exhilaration of flying in the same way that sailing a ship by itself can be somewhat satisfying. Although the experience isn't really on rails, it somewhat feels that way, if that makes sense.
Essentially, when playing the new CVs I think there has to be a more refined balance of rewarding and engaging moments with frustrating and tedious ones. When repositioning one's ship, you still have to navigate through terrain, angle toward threats, watch out for torps, and prepare turrets in advance if you're in a BB or some CAs. When flying your planes back out to a target, you really don't have to do much except think about which ship you want to hit and which angle you want to approach from. I'm satisfied and rewarded in a ship if I have good torp or salvo prediction and land a dev strike or citadel, bounce incoming shells or dodge torps, or provide utility with hydro, smoke, or radar, but in planes dropping fighters feels like a wholly detached experience, and dodging flak is not so much rewarding as getting hit by flak feels frustrating. Even landing a torp, rocket, or dive bombing strike, essentially the epitome of rewarding experiences in the reworked CVs, doesn't feel that great when the alpha damage is so low and the chances for fire and flooding don't seem that high to compensate. It feels more like, great, I actually landed a hit; now here's hoping I get to try again instead of losing the rest of my planes and being sent back to spawn (the carrier).
It's a difficult thing to balance, given that the reworked CVs have such little utility. If WG makes their damage too easy and rewarding, surface ship players (the vast majority) will hate it, and if the damage isn't rewarding enough, nobody will play CVs. I went into the CV rework a bit excited and hoping that flying the planes around would be fun, but at the end of the day it has fallen rather flat for me. Even worse, the new CVs with their poor utility feel more detached from the rest of the team than before for me. Perhaps I'm just still unused to the new mode, and the test server mostly filling battles with bots is certainly a factor there as well. If CVs were given some more unique utility consumables to play around with, I think the whole experience could potentially become a lot deeper.
TL;DR I'd mainly like to see less emphasis on flak dodging, smoother/enhanced flight controls, and more unique consumables to play around with to add utility and engagement and reward skilled play.
